


C12H22O11 (Or, The Science of Candy)

by schmevil



Category: Avengers (Comic)
Genre: Crack, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmevil/pseuds/schmevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Science can make things taste really, really good. Tony and Vision set out to prove this: by making candy. Carol and Wanda play lab rat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	C12H22O11 (Or, The Science of Candy)

"It is time," Vision says ominously. The ominous vibe is somewhat allayed by the yellow oven mitts on his hands. Yellow with big splotches of pink that are supposedly flowers. Carol has her doubts. He beckons them into the kitchen, and then disappears into its smokey depths, with a swirl of his cape.

Carol sighs and pushes herself out of the comfortable chair she'd just as rather stay in, then offers a hand to Wanda. Wanda looks at it like it's poison. Carol isn't offended. She'd look at her hand that way too, if their positions were reversed - anything that brings her closer to the kitchen is, as far as she's concerned, a serious threat to her continued existence. Thank god for invulnerability. And with her chaos magic, Wanda is probably in the clear too.

"Integrity first. Service before self," Carol mutters. Wanda looks at her askance. Carol shrugs. "Unofficial Air Force motto. Excellence in all we do. "

"Okay?"

"Calms me down."

Wanda nods. "Service before self," she says, then links arms with Carol. "The things we do for friends."

"If I die, you can have my can have my Louis Vuitton bag." It wasn't much a sacrifice - Tony had given it to her one year, but damn if it wasn't the ugliest purse she owned.

"If I die, you can have my jade necklace."

"Hold me, Wanda." She just laughed and pushed Carol into the kitchen. In front of her, the bitch.

The kitchen looks like Wanda took offense to its existence, and set off a chaos bomb in it. Or like Jen and Tony had decided to do some live fire exercises while baking. There's a stack of dishes two feet high in the sink, and more on the counter, and beyond that, a small pile of rubble that might once have been glass and china. The oven hangs open - to cool off - and its insides are blackened with char. Smoke clings to the once-white ceiling, and there are trays and trays of misshapen confections, piled on top of the stove.

"Don't pay attention to those!" Tony says, waving them over to the big kitchen table that can fit ten of them at breakfast. He looks-- in a word, frantic. His pupils are blown wide and his got dark smudges on his face. Light smudges too - butter? She doesn't want to know.

"Ok, just kill me now," she whispers to Wanda.

"No," she whispers back. "And not just because I'm not certain how I would do that." Wanda grins at her and moves to take a seat beside Vision at the table.

Right, Carol says to herself. If you want to eat at the big girl table, you've got to act like a big girl. The problem though, is that she doesn't want to eat at this table, not today.Semper freaking fi, Danvers. She takes the seat that Tony is directing her towards - like an air traffic controller. My god, he's lost it.

Tony clasps his hands behind his back and squares his shoulders. It's his speech giving pose. Please don't let there be a candy speech. Tony clears his throat. Carol tries to wish herself dead.

"When I started this project, I wanted to prove that science can do more than provide more than life-saving vaccines, or time-saving technologies. It can do more than solve blah blah blah blah..." Carol zones out, without looking like she's zoned out - a technique she perfected in the Air Force. "And now, it's time." With that final thought, Tony whips a grey-white cloth - probably fully white, once; Jarvis is going to kill them, and no one will ever find the bodies - off the hidden lumps that dot the table, revealing--

Wanda gasps. It's like something out of the movies. Her hands come up and cover her mouth, and her eyebrows shoot up. It would be comical, if Carol wasn't doing the same thing.

They're beautiful. The table is covered from one end to the other in meticulously crafted and decorated candies. Rock candy, stained-glass confections, and even glossy truffles. Things that Carol doesn't even recognize, but they're all gorgeous. Done in autumn colours, oranges, yellows and browns, for the most part. Some of them though, look like they came right out of the mind of a kid - spider candies, complete with legs and pincers, and masked bat cookies, with candy eyes. It's--

"Incredible," Wanda says, sounding awed. Carol doesn't blame her - she's a bit awed herself. Tony can't even scramble eggs. Tony smiles like she just called the Iron Man a heartbreaking work of staggering (artistic and scientific) genius.

Vision gives his own version of a blinding grin, a little quirk of the lips. Wanda shoots him a fond look. Married people.

Tony looks at them expectantly. "Don't keep me in suspense."

Carol eyes the spread. It's all lovely, of course, but is it edible? She does a quick threat assessment of what she can actually identify, and decides to start with the pretty rock candy. She can drain stars: candy shouldn't be a problem. Deep breaths,Danvers. She takes one then, what she hopes won't be her last one, and then pops the candy into her mouth.

Tony leans forward, watching her closely, and his hands are now in front of him, his fingers actually steepled. Carol has a wild moment of internal struggle, where her brain sends her bizarre danger signals: maybe he's a Skrull, or a Doombot in Tony form, or maybe he's gone crazy. Poison, poison, poison, it seems to be telling her. Carol closes her mouth around the candy, closes her eyes and hopes for the best.

There's a second or two of nothing, where all she gets is hard, and round, and then it's like she's getting KOed with a taste sensation. Sweet, citrus and something else - vanilla? No, no, not vanilla - hell, she doesn't care. All she knows is that it's amazing.

She's moaning. Out loud.

"What do you think?" Tony asks. He's got this look of little-boy expectation and hope on his face, and if Carol were at all in her right mind, she might take the opportunity to string him along. But she's not. Definitely not in her right mind, because this candy - it can't be real.

"It's incredible," she says.

"Vision helped."

"I merely assisted with decoration. Tony researched and prepared these himself."

Wanda places a hand on top of his. "They're lovely."

Tony sits down with them, finally, and loads up own plate up. "Go ahead guys, there's plenty. " There's a whole table of it, so yeah, Carol would call that plenty. Tony nibbles happily on a bat cookie, and then sighs. "Now all we have to do is bag it."

Bag it? "Are you planning on... selling it?"

"It's for the trick-or-treaters," Tony says, like it's utterly obvious. Duh, right? Except that that's crazy talk.

"Tony, you can't bag up artisanal cookies and candy for children."

"Why not?" he asks, half his face stricken, the other half offended. It's kind of a horrifying expression, really.

"For one thing, this stuff is way too good for kids."

"Carol!" Wanda scolds her.

"And for another," she says, continuing as if Wanda hadn't interrupted at all. "I don't think parents will appreciate you giving them home made treats."

Tony stares at her, his expression a veritable ellipsis of confusion.

"Razor in the candy apple?" He stares at her. "Poisoned lollipops?"

"Why would anyone do something like that?"

"They don't, really. But try telling that to parents. Every year my mother gave us lectures on the does and don'ts of trick-or-treating, and number two was, Never Accept Open Or Homemade Treats." Carol rolls her eyes.

Tony though, is anything but amused by the foibles of paranoid parents. He scowls at his table of beautiful candy. "What am I supposed to do with all of this, then?"

"I'm sure we'll figure it out, Tony." She pats his shoulder reassuringly with one hand, and stuffs a lovely glazed truffle into his mouth with the other. "There are nine people living in this house, and how many reserve Avengers?"

Tony grumbles, something like, "I guess so."

"You could always open up your own candy shop."

"Stark's Sweets?" Wanda offers.

"I like it."

"Everything in red wrapping, with gold ribbon."

"See Tony, all you need now is a business plan."

Tony scowls again, but this time there's no heat in it. "Shut up and try the ganash."

She does. It's incredible.


End file.
